


La Douleur Exquise

by Binaryoutliar



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Anorexia, Anxiety, Body Dysphoria, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Depression, Drinking, Eating Disorders, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Grad School AU, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Post-Canon, Suicide, Unreliable Narration, because im approximately that old, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2018-11-07 10:58:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11057538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Binaryoutliar/pseuds/Binaryoutliar
Summary: The battle begins when he is 17, alone for the first time in forever it seems. He tells himself it’s one he can win. But recovery is one of the hardest decisions we will make. When we are weak, we seek shelter in something so much bigger than ourselves, forgotten in the shadows of our peers. It is a delicate process and you cannot do it alone. Sometimes help comes too late. Sometimes it comes on a warm July night – in the form of a friend long abandoned when things got too sour for his taste.





	1. Chapter 1

“There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps onward, an easier day, an unexpected laugh…A mirror that doesn’t matter anymore.” – Katherine West

7/6/2021

Kenma knew why everyone had left after high school.

Actually, most of his classmates still lived in Tokyo - save for a few exceptions, most of them had chosen colleges in the city. Several of them went to school with him at Temple, though they didn’t speak. Occasionally they would look his way and, should they accidentally catch his eyes, would wave back with starry eyes full of disdain. 

It wasn’t just his Nekoma classmates that didn’t talk to him – he lived in a city of millions of people, yet none of them seemed to even know his name. There were students his own age, in his own department, that wouldn’t have been able to tell you a single thing about him, although he couldn’t guarantee that he would have told them anything had they even tried to ask. But he also didn’t blame them – he didn’t want to be around himself either. But it wasn’t like he had time for relations, nor the desire.  
He was a psychology major – a 4th year who was working on his residency at a facility in which the boy’s own mother had once suggested he receive treatment himself. A constant question was always asked when other people on campus found out, should they attempt to strike conversation. A colleague had once asked while sitting outside and smoking cigarettes “why Kenma had chosen to do his residency there, as it was obvious as to his condition.” He had looked at her, stare empty and saddened. “I’m not as sick as them” is all he had said before walking away.

That was, of course a lie, as Kenma could easily tell you. As one may assume, he was no stranger to signs and symptoms of a wide array of disorders. And although he may prefer to discourage self-diagnosis, he felt no need to seek confirmation from a second source on a less than professional level. Everyone knew, too. Kenma could tell when passersby would direct their gaze towards him, their slander aimed to kill something inside him that he really wished would just die.

“Look at that poor boy.”

“How tragic.”

“You know he could drop dead any day now.”  
It had been a professor that had carelessly whispered that last one while Kenma was leaving class one day, tossed about to another teacher from their department. 

Years had passed since he had cared though – since he was a second year in high school and he watched his best friend walk across the stage at his graduation. It had become stomach churning, mind numbing anxiety that was quelled only by a menial combination of disassociation, apathy, and a healthy dose of persistence. The loneliness was so much less painful when you didn’t have to face it. When you had no friends you had no worries. There was no one to cancel plans with, no one to worry needlessly over, no one to lose…

But if it wasn’t Kuroo, Kenma didn’t care. If it wasn’t Kuroo, he would still be left with an empty feeling somewhere at the back on his throat and an ache in his chest where his heart might have been.

Truth be told, Kenma understood more of this affair than it might seem. He knew that Kuroo was the reason he kept his hair long, had continued to dye it blonde until giving up again several months prior when his hair had started to fall out. 

He knew it wasn’t from the bleaching but he wouldn’t tell his doctor that.

Even subconsciously, Kenma had sought to be everything that Kuroo had ever wanted – somewhere in his heart, he knew that he wanted Kuroo to find him desirable. 

But he also knew that sometimes love means saying goodbye to the person you need most, because eventually you realize that there is no need, only desire, and that they don’t want you. It overcame him quickly, along with the realization that he was no longer wanted and that – maybe – he never was.

So he allowed his body to destroy itself – eating its own flesh and muscles until one day, he finally did drop dead inside the very prison he had created for himself. Kenma would make himself empty, just like his felt in that pit in the bottom of his stomach. There was no one there to pretend for anymore – no motivation, no hunger, no pain. He blocked out everything – all of the emotional turmoil that had been stewing inside him for as long as he could remember – until all he could see was a narrow road in front of him and all he could feel was the biting cold of the winter wind. But see, the problem with becoming numb is that, while it means you don’t feel the pain of rejection – the sting of loneliness – you don’t get to experience the little joys in life either. 

Perhaps, Kenma thought, he had already been dead for years.

\--

Kenma sat a bottle of green tea down beside the register as he reached to pull money from his pocket. Shaking hands struggled to keep hold of the coins that they grasped at. The woman behind the counter was new – not the tired looking old man that usually worked this shift – and while Kenma had grown used to the passing eyes of strangers, it wasn’t often that he would have to avoid their gaze for quite so long. He had assumed that most people knew better than to stare in this day and age, but obviously this girl hadn’t received the message and her eyes were judging if anything. Prying at his sallow skin, wilted cheeks, and the tendons that jutted from his neck.

Anxiety was a common enemy for Kenma, and he had spent most of his life learning how to avoid situations that heightened it. He wore headphones when he wanted to be alone, refused eye contact. 

He moved to put the money on the counter just as the girl reached out her hand and the warmth from her steadily pumping heart permeated into Kenma’s own body.

Looking at his hands, they were like marble – carved delicately with tender care in the palest, smoothest stone. To him, they felt as in they were on fire, but they were so cold to the touch. Once again, he knew this – knew what it meant at least - but refuted the possibility of resolution. 

Quickly dropping the money on the counter, Kenma retreated, drink in tow and an admonished looking girl in his periphery.

“Keep the change,” he muttered, voice weak and shaking as he quickly exited the store – door held open for the summer breeze.

He moved with practiced swiftness through the hordes of people that crowded the streets. They would stare at him over their shoulders, some of them frowning, but he wouldn’t return their gaze – he would keep his head down and his headphones on, except for when he was taking a drink. He would look up quickly, close his eyes for just a second, and then return them to the ground so he wouldn’t accidentally feel guilt creep through his spine when their eyes watched him walk the other direction.

It was 7pm on a Friday night and the traffic in Minato was to be expected. The train station wasn’t far though – maybe two blocks north – and then he would be on his way home. 

No matter, it was less overwhelming than Shinjuku this time of day.

Kuroo lived in Shinjuku now.

“Kenma!” 

His eyes shot up as someone reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. Quickly, Kenma pulled his headphones from his ears and turned to face the other person. 

There were two people, one with unmistakably golden eyes and another with the face of a monk.

“Bo, you’re worrying him,” the glassy eyed boy stated not so delicately. 

Keiji smiled at his classmate’s confusion but frowned as he took in his sickly appearance. The boy in front of him looked very different from the boy he had said goodbye to two years ago – that had been the last time they had spoken and it had been over video chat. This was, for that matter, the first time he had stood close enough to touch Kenma since high school. The blonde had been thin as a rail four years prior, but there was an obvious atrophy to his muscles now that hadn’t been there before.

He couldn’t possibly be playing Volleyball anymore.

“I wouldn’t have recognized you if it weren’t for the hair.” Bokuto backed up closer to Keiji and Kenma found he didn’t need to ask what they were doing out together on a Friday night.

“Where are you going?” 

It seemed that subtlety was still lost on Bokuto, no matter his age. Kenma reached up, playing at the soft hairs that covered the side of his jaw.

“I was just on my way home.” He looked from one perfectly knotted tie to another before continuing. “I’m sorry if I’m holding you up.” 

He moved to put his headphones back in – escape and rethink the situation over and over again until he comes up with every reason he deserves to die. Nauseating anxiety. Over stimulation.

“No way!” Bokuto grabbed his hands, smiling gleefully at Kenma as he tried his best to put distance between them, a grimace plastered on his lips. The young man could feel 

Keiji’s eyes on him and knew. Keiji knew and Kenma was all too startlingly aware of that at this point.

“You should come get drinks with us.”

He didn’t want to. Didn’t think he could physically manage to. There were impossible to predict variables in this situation – most of them being Bokuto himself – and Kenma hadn’t taken any of them in when planning his evening. It was too late now to go changing his schedule. 

But Keiji knew and Bokuto undoubtedly did as well because God knew he was smarter than he would let people believe. The former rested a gentle had on Bokuto’s upper arm and pulled it away slowly and Kenma’s hands dropped from his grip. For a moment, their gazes – Keiji and Bokuto simultaneously – connected with his and it was there in their eyes. 

They were scared. 

“I can go, I guess.” 

Kenma stumbled over the words in his head but was reassured when a smile returned to Bokuto’s face.

“Great! Tetsu will be so excited to see you!”

It was too late to say no.

\--

“…Your hair looks awful.” The black haired boy mumbled.

Kenma sat down next to Kuroo on a loveseat in the center of the bar. Slouching against the back, he spread his knees comfortably in front of him, shifting slightly closer to the leather armrest. Before long, Kenma had fetched his phone from his pocket.

“So does yours.” The tapping began.

“Orthostatic hypotension?” Kuroo takes a sip from some drink he is holding in his right hand. With his other hand, he reaches over and takes another glass from the table in front of them. Kenma takes it without looking up but can feel his gaze on his heaving chest and fluttering eyes. 

“Such big words for such common things. Why do you care again?” 

Kenma’s fingers narrowly avoid Kuroo’s during the exchange. The older boy lets out an airy laugh.

“Maybe you should get more iron in your diet.”

“Maybe you need to mind your own business.”

“Nutrition IS my business, in case you forgot.”

Bokuto cleared his throat.

“So, Kenma. Why didn’t you stay with volleyball in college?” He asked, taking a sip from the drink in his hands, sitting cross legged on the loveseat. Kenma continues to tap at his phone, diligently avoiding conversation. His fingers are so cold. He is so tired. Beside him, he could feel Kuroo staring, head cocked to the side – the same way he watched Kenma when they were younger, thinking that he didn’t notice.

“…I didn’t make the team…” From beneath his lashes, he could see Keiji’s head shoot up from where he had been looking between his knees at the floor, eyes startled. 

Kuroo laughed through his nose, crossing his legs and arms. He leaned back into the couch in some sort of grim defeat. 

“That’s funny. I heard you didn’t pass your physical.”

“So what if I was sick?” Kenma bit back, angered by the provocative tone that Kuroo was using with him – one that he had never aimed towards Kenma before. “I still didn’t make the team cause of it.”

“Bruh, you are still sick – just look at yourself.”

“I’m not sick.” Kenma continued to stare at his phone.

“No, you’re just sick in the head. You’ve gotta be what – 95, 100 lbs.”

His words stung like a thousand cuts to Kenma’s ego. It was fragile to begin with – numbers only hurt it even more, especially when they were so very, very wrong.  
“84.” He whispered, taking a drink from whatever was in his hand – something sweet and tender just like he would have wanted, had he ordered for himself.

Kuroo had ordered for everyone.

“What?!”

Kuroo’s words were loud in the small bar, loud in Kenma’s ears that hadn’t heard his voice in years. Hearing him angry, like the rage his mother held when he had confessed to her the truth about his health – it made him quiver inside. Kenma knew he wasn’t asking a question. He knew Kuroo was in shock. 

He repeated it anyway.

“8-”

“No, I heard you.” He started, staring distantly behind Keiji and Bokuto before looking into his lap, fiddling with his drink. “I just wish I hadn’t…”

Kenma continued to scroll though his phone, keeping his eyes trained as silence overwhelmed the group. It was in his voice – the sound of disappointment and regret. What for, 

Kenma didn’t understand. He was at no fault in this, but it shone in his glistening eyes when Kenma chanced a glance at him from beneath the hair that shielded his vision of the world – made it so narrow in comparison to everyone else’s. He blamed himself.

Putting his phone on the table, he looked to his old friends. They all stared into their laps, somber and sullen. “Look,” Kenma tried to make his voice strong. He tried to help them understand that he really did take the situation – if you could call it that – seriously. “I am already aware that my condition had become rather obvious to most everyone.” Kuroo looked over at him, tears shimmering in the wells of his eyes. They were Kenma’s fault, there was no denying it. In this brief evening, he had already proved to be a burden to him.  
“But I’m fine. So please don’t worry.”

Kuroo closed his eyes, gritting his teeth behind pursed lips. Gathering himself, he stood, arms stiff by his sides, fists clenched. He turned to Bokuto and Keiji, bowing slightly. “I’m sorry for ruining your evening.” He mumbled before grabbing his bag to leave and as he walked away, Kenma returned to his phone – he wouldn’t watch him leave again.

\-- 

A few minutes of silence passed, each of them looking into their laps, fiddling with things that weren’t really important – just distractions. Someone had to be the first to talk – it wouldn’t be Kenma.

“He seemed worried.” Surprised to hear Keiji’s voice, the other two looked up; Kenma rolling his eyes delicately into the back of his head and around it. 

“Pfft.” 

Another bout of silence passed quickly, this one shorter than the last. 

“What does he mean you are sick, Kenma?” It was Bokuto who spoke first this time and while his friend’s voice had been stone cold and straight forward, the other could hear the lilting tone he used with him, so delicate and filled to the brim with concern.

“Don’t feel sad.” Kenma muttered, putting his phone back into his pocket but still not looking up from the floor. “I’m doing it to myself.”

Bokuto stood slowly, his fists bunched at his side before releasing them and walking around the table towards his old friend. He crouched by his leg, placing one of those large, tender hands on his knee. “That’s why I’m sad…”

Despite his better judgement, Kenma looked over towards him, twisting his head to the side, glancing through his lashes. Bokuto looked even more defeated than Kenma felt. 

And then he looked to Keiji and Kenma felt his stomach lurch.

Their eyes – so similar in disposition – bore into each other for a long time. Kenma knew he was scared – Keiji was at a loss for words when it came to helping him. He knew  
Kenma was scared too, but that he was powerless after so many years – Keiji had been there in the beginning, when it was all just anxiety fueled starvation. When Kenma felt too sick to his stomach to even consider eating – before it became fear. Fear that if he started eating he wouldn’t be able to stop – that his body would reject whatever he put in it. Fear of being alone that Keiji had understood in such vivid detail.

Keiji’s eyes looked like the kind of fear you feel when you are walking through the doors of triage to find your sick and dying friend on sterile white sheets and an IV in their arm. They were the eyes that Hinata had worn when Kenma had passed out on their train ride home a few weeks prior. His mother’s eyes when he said he was going to live on his own.  
These eyes seemed to follow him.

Eventually Kenma began to feel his lip quiver only the slightest bit and bile rising towards his throat. Bokuto stood as he took notice, looking towards the door – he knew Kuroo  
was probably still standing just outside it, smoking a cigarette or looking at the brilliant sunset that was undoubtedly shrouded in the summer smog.

“I’m gonna go talk to him.”

\--

“I knew someone like you once…” Keiji said, stopping to drink his beer before holding the bottle between his knees, hands clasped around it. “He worked his body too hard – started to lose control of himself and the things around him.”

“You mean Oikawa?”

“He wasn’t as great as people thought.…”

“But he’s on Team Japan now, isn’t he?” Keiji nodded. “Then it isn’t the same…I am weak. I’ve always been weaker than everyone but I had friends. Where are they now?”  
Kenma’s nails dug into his upper arm with a bitter sting as a swell of anxiety started in his stomach. The tender skin that broke under brittle nails made way to stinging tears that welled in his eyes.

In a supple manner, Keiji leaned in, softening his voice. “Maybe you pushed us all away when you became afraid of us trying to take away the only thing that you feel makes you special.”

“You say “us” like it matters.”

Silence – the bar kept moving but the world stopped around Kenma. He was aware of his breathing, the gradual in and out pull of his stomach as he tensed his abdominal muscles in shame.

“…I was afraid…”

Keiji leaned forward further, hands clasped and wrists resting on his spread knees. “Of what?”

Tears creeped from the corners of Kenma’s eyes. The truth hurts sometimes – he knew that. For years, he had avoided facing this part of himself – the horrors of loneliness that he had been overcome with since the start of his memories – since childhood. 

“Of being alone…for the first time in my life, he wouldn’t be there…I always say that I want to disappear…”

Kenma wouldn’t embarrass himself here. 

“Is that really true though?”

“I think so…but with him it is different…maybe you are right. Maybe I do want people to think I’m special – not people…just him.”

He cried. Not for the first time, he was humiliating himself over someone that wasn’t worth his tears. He was sick to his stomach with guilt for feeling this way about someone who he should only see as a friend – someone who had been so quick to throw him away when he found something new.

“You mean Kuroo, right?”

“Do you think he ever missed me?” Kenma whispered through gentle tears.

“I think he still does. I think we all do.”

“But I’m right here.”

Silence fell over the two once again. Keiji cast a pointed gaze at Kenma, one that was far too sad to ease his stomach.

“You two have been friends for years. He’s scared too. Please talk to him, Kenma.”

\-- 

The air outside was warm and sticky but Kuroo didn’t think any number of cigarettes would warm the feeling that had settled inside him. He flicked ash into the pavement and watched as a passerby stepped on the once lit butt of his previous cigarette. Kuroo took another drag off his current one.

Bokuto watched his longtime friend and confidant as he stewed in his own head. The crease between his brows and the nearly empty pack of Camel’s was clue enough to his distress.

“Are you going to talk to him about it at least?”

“What is there to talk about?” Kuroo mumbled, taking another long drag. A flare of smoke blew from his nostrils as he continued. “I’m not a therapist and that’s what he needs.”

“But you’re his friend.”

“He hasn’t talked to me in years, Bo.”

“He’s been sick, Kuroo!” Bokuto’s voice raised for just a moment till he bit at his own lip, thinking better. “We all just assumed you knew…”

Kuroo’s gaze fell to the ground as a familiar head of blonde hair peeked out of the door. It was familiar, yet foreign – straw like now, with frayed ends and a little too close in color to Kenma’s sickly yellowed skin. He looked like a wax figure, with taught cheekbones and soft, fine hairs lining his jaw and neck. Kenma – it seemed Bokuto had been correct – had been sick for quite a long time.

“Hey.” The youngest of the men mumbled. Kenma stepped out further onto the sidewalk, coming into full view. Kenma’s hand wrapped easily around his arm as he squeezed it, his skin turning even paler beneath his grip. 

Bokuto took quick note of his presence before disappearing back into the bar, quietly easing his way into the crowd to find Keiji.

“Can we talk?” 

Kuroo stared momentarily, wondering what it was that had Kenma’s face twisted into such a gruesome look. It raised a stake into his heart, ripping and pulling at the walls that he had built around it years before.

And then he started walking. Kenma followed close behind, watching Kuroo flick the dead butt of his last cigarette into the street. When he stopped, it was in the alleyway beside the bar, hidden in the dark recesses of the dumpster.

It smelled like vomit.

“You left me…”

Kenma’s voice rang like church bells, mourning a funeral. The voice of someone who hadn’t been heard in all their life.

“You stopped answering my phone calls.

It was true, he had stopped answering the phone after a while. Kuroo had only been able to talk for short period of time and it always seemed rushed.

Kenma had no longer been a priority.

“Why?”

Clipped, short. There was no friendly familiarity to their conversation, only bitter, resentful words exchanged to pass through the night. They wrung everything in Kenma’s heart dry and if he looked hard enough he could see them doing the same thing to Kuroo. 

But he couldn’t see. Because Kuroo was perfect just being Kuroo – there was no way.

“Because of this…”

Back turned, Kenma motioned to his body, head to toe, looking at the ground. Kuroo didn’t say anything, just smiled gloomily like he was replaying something beautiful in his head.

“What do I look like to you, Kuroo?’

“Like Kenma.”

A blonde flurry of hair whipped through the air as Kenma turned around, stalking towards the taller, raven haired man. He stood still at arm’s length, never close enough to touch

“NO! What kind of disgusting person have I turned into? What have I become without you!?”

And Kuroo had the audacity to laugh.

“You always were funny. Where is any of this coming from? This isn’t like you.”

“It’s stupid…but when I see all my failures, all of my flaws sitting in front of me in the mirror, in the photos of me from high school, with you – the whole team...” Tears welled in  
the banks of Kenma’s eyes as he fought them off. He clenched and unclenched his fists as he stared intently at the ground, watching droplets fall to the cement. 

“I see them around and they just stare…I just stare now…not just in mirrors anymore. In windows and puddles.”

Kenma shook his head, not wanting to keep talking. He wanted the thoughts to stop coming, the words to end so that he wouldn’t embarrass himself more. But they didn’t.

“I claim that I love you, Kuroo, but I don’t. I don’t feel anything anymore other than this guilt and self-loathing. But it hurt so much…”

A fist clenched around Kuroo’s heart and he thought for a minute that he was in shock. Maybe he was. But this melancholy feeling was not the one he thought he would be wearing when he had dreamed that Kenma would tell him he loved him as if it weren’t his highest hope.

“What did?” He stammered out. Kenma held tightly to his upper arm, rubbing at his chilled skin. His breath was so weary and tired, but he wouldn’t let the moment overwhelm him. He looked to Kuroo’s eyes, searching them.

“Watching you leave – watching you walk away without looking back at me. I had loved you for so long. I had convinced myself that you would stay forever…”

“So you stopped talking to me for almost five years?”

The last piece of Kuroo’s heart dropped when Kenma’s eyes hit the ground again. Such shame was held in that gaze. He could always read Kenma like a book, and he had betrayed something deep inside him.

“It hurts.” Kuroo stopped, grabbing onto Kenma’s frost bitten hand and taking a step closer. “When you see the person you love so sick.”

Finally releasing the tears, Kenma let them fall silently to the ground; the most desperate cry Kuroo had ever seen in a man.

“I’ve tried to be better, I swear.”

Kuroo could hear the exhaustion in Kenma’s voice – he had clearly been trying. It was the struggle of loneliness that he was hearing in his words, something which he was frighteningly familiar with himself.

“But what?”

“I can’t let all this hard work go to waste…”

The knot in Kuroo’s stomach grew longer at his friend’s words of surrender. This wasn’t hard work that he was looking at – it was a disease that had taken over the body and soul of a beautiful, loving man who had been left far too alone for far too long.

“It won’t be long now, Kuroo.”

His heart stopped beating.

“We can part ways here and lose nothing. And maybe we both wish this was all being said 4 or 5 years ago, but it isn’t. And I am going to die and you are going to move on to some nice girl with long hair and a pretty face that can give you everything you deserve.”

The smell of vomit was soon accompanied by Kuroo’s own acidic bile, dry heaving and bent over at his waist, hands on his knees.

“Don’t say that!” 

His voice was sweltering, hot like the summer sun of just hours before. It was filled with his own guilt, a pile of unsent text messages that he could rummage through – find the one where he had typed “I hope you are okay”. 

Kuroo stood swiftly, sweeping Kenma into his arms with desperation, pressing his face into the breast of his jacket.

“Please don’t say that.”

Tears slipped through obsidian lashes onto Kenma’s hair. Like rain, they washed him clean, choking him and drowning him in all of his sins as they fled his body. Love, it seemed, could be quite painful.

“I’ve been so worried about you, you idiot. For a while, I thought you WERE dead! I have…so much I need to say…”

It felt like something was clawing inside Kenma, trying to run, trying to override his senses. It was a familiar feeling, but this time, Kuroo was there too. And when Kuroo was there, the anxiety was a little less powerful and a little more bearable and Kenma didn’t scream because Kuroo’s tears made it okay to cry.

Just this once.

\--

They walked together to the train station. No one was talking, but that was okay because Kenma had promised that they would get lunch together the next day. 

It was a beautiful night, it seemed. Outside of the alley, the sky was lit by the city streets, the business men trudging out of late night bars. 

Kuroo held tightly to Kenma’s hand.

Something inside both of them danced because this was wrong – what they were doing was not okay but it was so right that neither one seemed to be bothered. Their hearts were racing and Kenma thought he might be sick with the way it was pounding in his chest.

The two men parted ways at the station, one heading north East, the other another direction with the promise of another day. Kuroo continued to smile, Kenma’s hands continued  
to shake. Their hearts beat harder, faster, for a whole new moment in their future.

Tomorrow would come, tomorrow would be better because this time they were waking up together. Not in the same way – in something totally new and with such a big promise with it. 

I will live.

He will live.

We will live together.

\--

Name: Kozume Kenma  
Date: 7/7/2021  
Time: 9:23 a.m.  
COD: Sudden cardiac death  
>> Electrolyte imbalance 

Name: Tetsurou Kuroo  
Date: 7/23/2021  
Time: 1:24 a.m.  
COD: Referred by coroner

\-- 

In the end, they did.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are two sides to every story. Sometimes we get to live both sides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to start this off by saying that I never thought I would revisit this fic. Never in a million years did I think I would need to repeat the therapeutic process that this fic acted as. I needed to put the deep ache in my soul into words. This was my one way of expressing “La Douleur Exquise” that I felt at the time and that I continue to feel. La Douleur Exquise is loneliness and grief and profound guilt over something that was never really yours to begin with. It is the empty feeling in your arms and breathlessness that you get when you remember the first person who ever really loved you and that you ever really loved and the time you kissed goodbye from your hospital beds without knowing it was the end.
> 
> To everyone out there who has read this fic or will read it – thank you. 
> 
> It is with a tired and heavy heart that – half way through writing this – I have seen the death of another loved one to this disease. So;
> 
> For Addi – this is a nightmare that few ever wake up from. I can only say that I’m glad you won’t have to live in it anymore.

6/14/2021

Kuroo flipped through the papers in his hand, jostling his pen between his fingers and outer thigh as he leaned against the emergency department’s check in counter. It was late and his bleary eyes struggled to focus behind his glasses. He placed his clipboard back down, kicking a leg about behind him for an optimal stretch. In the distance, Kuroo could hear the wheels of an incoming gurney, the muffled voices of their Paramedic team and the heavy sound of the rubber soled shoes.

He jammed his clipboard back under his nose and continued reading through the patient meal plan for the following week. Desperately, Kuroo tried to distract his eyes from wandering to whoever was in that bed – he knew who was in the bed, had heard the call just a moment before – but looking would just make him sick.

“Blood oxygen level is stabilizing around 80%. Get a saline drip ready and prepare to run a secondary EKG.”

A glimmer of ginger hair moved quickly beside the gurney. 

“You okay, Kuroo?” The nurse working reception – a classmate of his named Haruka - pulled the clipboard down and set it to the side, lacing her fingers under her chin. Kuroo exhaled heavily, sticking his pen behind his ear and running his hands down his face.

“Ya…ya I’m fine. Tired.”

Haruka looked at him in thinly veiled doubt, a knowing smile pressed across her lips. She had undoubtedly skimmed the patient file already and – as smart as she was – more likely than not could read the anxiety that caused his fingers to shake. She had come for dinner at his parent’s house just the other night and had great trouble finding their street – she would remember the name. She slid the clipboard back over to him and returned to typing vigorously on her computer.

“Poor kid passed out on the train. It’s no wonder – just look at him.”

Kuroo circled the name of a patient who he has sure had mentioned a peanut allergy. He fought against his boiling blood and the way it drained from his face and his heart beat faster. He took note of the way his hands shook and how Haruka watched him with the saddest look set deeply into her eyes. 

“I’d really rather not, Haru.”

 

Kuroo opened his locker, grabbing his shoes and placing them beside his feet on the floor. A deep sigh resonated through the empty locker room as he ran his hands across his face in frustration.

”What’s on your mind, Tetsu?”

Kuroo’s head snapped to his side, finding Daichi beside him still dressed in his scrubs, stethoscope around his neck. Will not withstanding, Kuroo moved over ever so slightly, opening a spot for his friend beside him. As he sat, he leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees in attentiveness. 

“Kenma was…” He had to stop mid-sentence, compose himself. Kuroo’s chest felt tight – heavy – like he was wrapped in 100 blankets but his skin felt cold as ice. He swallowed his anxiety like the bitter pill it was. “Kenma came through today.”

“Ya, I noticed.” A subtle tap against Kuroo’s knee was the only direct comfort he got, but he could feel the sympathetic aura that Daichi was projecting towards him. “You should talk to Tooru.”

“Why in the name of the Gods good Earth would I ever want to talk to Tooru?”

Daichi shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Back imposingly straight then curled then head hung low. He scratched at the stubble along his jaw and Kuroo already knew what he was going to say.

“When was the last time you talked?”

Kuroo wouldn’t say it – couldn’t say it. If he spoke it into existence, he also gave shape to the guilt that he had been burying. Surely, he thought, Daichi must know. Surely Daichi could remember their first year of University together – when he went from checking his phone every hour to not even bothering. When had he stopped leaving messages on Kenma’s voicemail? It had been so many, many years; and for that, Kuroo was ashamed. 

“Look, I know Tooru isn’t anyone’s favorite person but I think he could offer you some really good advice if you would just ask him.” 

Daichi stood once again, unbuttoning his dress shirt after laying his coat over the bench in his stead. Kuroo couldn’t shake the images that plagued his mind – crisp white sheets and red hair. Was it a blessing that Kenma had been just out of his view?

“Can you send me his number?”

Daichi stopped in his various state of undress, turning just over his shoulder and smiling – self-satisfied – at Kuroo. 

“Of course.”

 

Kuroo rolled is phone over and over in his hand, rested it beside him on the pillow before picking it up again. The way he had tossed and turned in bed had wrapped the blankets far too tightly around his legs. In the humidity of summer, it felt like he was suffocating in his 1k room. 

Bare feet padded quietly across the light oak floors, sticking gingerly against the boards. The silence was deafening – the darkness was lonely. Even after pulling his sliding door to the side, Kuroo could feel goosebumps on the back of his neck in some visceral reaction to the fear in his stomach. He crossed the balcony, standing beside his smoking chair to smoke against the concrete wall instead.

He lit his cigarette, let the nicotine cast its calm across his trembling nerves – even out his shaky breathing. Pulling his phone from his pocket, Kuroo pulled against the idea of calling Oikawa – wondering just what Daichi thought he could say to make this better.

The Tooru he remembered from high school had been cold and fake, if not a bit immature at times. There wasn’t any empathy inside such a grandiose narcissist. Then again, Kuroo thought, he could vaguely remember months of Tooru sitting on the sidelines with everyone’s eyes watching him closely. He remembered thinking it was his knee.

“Hello? This is Oikawa.” A familiarly melodramatic voice chimed through the speaker of Kuroo’s phone, laid just to the side of his right arm where it draped across the balcony.

“It’s Tetsu.” 

“Yes, I see that.” The voice chimed again.

Kuroo took a deep breath around his cigarette, shaking his head with a nostalgic smile at the lilting tone that Oikawa was caught in as usual. 

“You are incorrigible.”

“Oh stop it.”

“Actually,” He stopped, wasting the butt of his cigarette in the ash tray behind him before turning back to his phone, using the time to find the words that he hadn’t quite thought through before calling. “I had a question.”

“You may ask it.”

“Does Hinata still come to your practices?” 

“Whenever he can, ya.”

“Does he ever talk about Kenma?” Kuroo is quick to follow; get the words past his lips before they wither away.

“Ya, actually I just saw him a couple days ago.” Oikawa’s end of the line went painfully silent, the only sound being their own breathing. “You’re still not talking to each other, are you?”

It took a moment too long for Kuroo to gather his bearings, find his voice and ensure that it wouldn’t shrivel in his throat or mouth before he could speak. “How was he when you saw him?”

The silence that followed was even more dreadful than before and indicative of the answer to come. This one was longer and far more intimidating as Oikawa shuffled what   
sounded like bedsheets on the other end of the line. 

“Tetsu, I don’t know if this is really my place.”

“Please, Tooru.” Kuroos’s heart beat wildly in his chest, his hands shaking violently against the concrete balcony as he felt his blood pounding through his head. “Please, just tell me.”

There was more shuffling on the other end, muttering voices and some apology for having to leave. There was the sound of a sliding door moving and then the sounds of the city joined Oikawa’s breathing. The line stayed wordless for another few moments and Kuroo contemplated hanging up instead.

“…He looks like shit.” Tooru sighed across the receiver, voice still soft as he hadn’t closed the balcony door behind him. Whoever he had left in bed could likely hear every other word. “It honestly scares me to look at him some days.”

The shaking in his hands moved to a quiver in his voice as the muscles in his face twitched too, tears threatening to surface on his cheeks as the picture he had been painting of Kenma in his mind began to gain color. “Scary how?”

“Like…after I hugged him I just had to walk away. And…” The picture gained minute detail. Kuroo could hear the click of a lighter and a rigorously deep inhalation. It spoke volumes to his routine anxiety around this subject – clearly a demon he had been facing for a long time yet chose not to fight any longer. “And it just makes me really grateful that Hajime and my sister were there for me, ya know?”

Kuroo took a moment after Tooru finished speaking to light his own cigarette again, calming the ocean that choked his breathing – the anxiety that climbed through his throat late at night and added shadows in his mind’s eye. “Then do you think I should try and…I don’t know…talk to him?”

“Honestly?” Oikawa spoke with baited breath before exhaling smoke as an afterthought. “No. I think it’ll hurt less in the long run if you just move on.”

Kuroo struggled to subdue the urge to vomit down the side of his building, forcing the acidic taste of bile back down his throat. He grabbed a fistful of his own hair, pulling against it in a futile attempt to distract himself from the scream that was tearing through his heart – he wouldn’t let himself be heard in such despair. 

It wasn’t entirely a lost cause, several stray tears slipping down his face and patting against his phone, obscuring the numbers on the screen. There were things he wanted to ask Oikawa – how did he KNOW!? Where were these answers when he had asked everybody else?

“Hey, Tetsu?”

“What?” Kuroo’s voice came out as a snap – more hostile than he intended it to be.

“You’re right to be concerned.”

When the line went dead, Kuroo cast his tired gaze back to his silent phone before looking out into the city night. He reveled in the patterns his smoke drew across the sky. The view below him was long and the people milled around solemnly, walking wearily towards their homes at odd hours. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what any of this had meant. And then he remembered. 

He remembered Tooru struggling to do jump serves. He remembered Tooru being benched for more than a few stray games. He remembered Tooru lying nearly lifeless on the ground and the silence of a stadium that held their breath in fear - his sister running beside the medical team as their coach placated Hajime on the sidelines.

“I always thought it was his knee…”

 

Kuroo shrugged his lab coat off and hung it neatly in his locker, his scrubs soon abandoned in the laundry basket across the room. This methodical ordeal had brought him comfort over the past few weeks when his mind would wander too far in one direction in the midst of his work. The hours that he spent staring listless through walls and clipboards became greater than the hours he was conscious of his own body, lost in the questions that ran rampant through his brain. More than one of his colleagues had made comments on his despondent mood although Daichi – it seemed – had laid rest to that sometime several days in.

Daichi – he was sure – had known for quite some time what it was that Kenma was facing and the longer Kuroo thought about it, the clearer it became. After all, he was the one who hadn’t spoken to him in years. Kuroo was the one that had stopped trying to reach out after his texts went unread for weeks at a time and Kenma’s voicemail had been full. Inside his heart, he had always argued that Kenma hadn’t wanted him around – that Kenma had other people in his life that were more important than he was now. That he was just a stepping stone for Kenma to grow as a person and “at least he had fulfilled that role”. Deeper inside, he had burned red for years with the feeling of rejection that his love had never been enough for Kenma.

Or maybe it had always been too much of the wrong kind of affection.

Bokuto had begged him the past few nights to “come out and play”, having spent their usual Wednesday night gathering alone in his apartment under the guise of having work early the next day. Bokuto undoubtedly knew that he didn’t as his schedule had been the same for nearly a year and he would have cross checked with Daichi after the last time he had left Bokuto waiting for him for nearly 5 hours.

He had stopped his more dangerous habits, but his friend was known to worry. Regardless, he had agreed to going out on Friday despite knowing full well how busy their usual bar in Ginza would be. It was important to Bokuto, and Kuroo would respect that. 

Bokuto had reassured him that any sadness wouldn’t be gone by the end of their escapades but there was a part of him that wondered if that would be true – the lingering sense of grief that filled every square inch of his limbs seemed awfully heavy tonight, especially when he fastened his watch around his wrist and swung his bag over his shoulders. It weighed down his heart, threatening to squeeze until he was afraid for it to beat anymore.

It was a desire that Kuroo had become well acquainted with staving off. 

Despite running late, he took his time in the empty locker room – the feeling of silence was serenity to his mind when everything his heart screamed was deafeningly loud. The sound of the hinges squeaking closed and his feet down the silent hallway was unsettling as patients were wheeled past him. It was all an illusion, Kuroo reminded himself. The world wasn’t silent, it was just overwhelming to the point of erasure and he pretended it wasn’t there. 

Outside, the setting sun cast a melodramatic glare across the city. In the middle of summer, the clouds were scarce but the ever present smog managed to displace the light just enough to skew colors in the favor of grey. Grey like the stone clad store fronts and grey like the pavement and business suits and monotony of everyone’s lives. Kuroo craved that monotony like water in his lungs. He held tightly to the strap of his cross body like his only lifeline in the real world as he made his way through the crowded, early evening streets to the train toward Ginza. 

There were plenty of eyes that cast themselves in his direction, usually embedded in the youthful smiles of giggling teenage girls who wished to catch his gaze. Kuroo’s authoritative stance and Hospital staff nametag were as desirable to them as his sly grin and endless legs – he couldn’t help but think of how different it was from Tooru’s charm and charisma. 

His phone buzzed in his pocket – Bokuto and Keiji were running late and would meet him at the bar. Kuroo shook his head, smiling, and pocketed his phone again. If he hadn’t known Bokuto for so long he would be annoyed, but familiarity had made his heart grow ever fonder of his best friend’s sporadic tendencies. His phone buzzed two more times. 

It wasn’t from Bokuto, it was from Keiji, but he figured this was a good reason to curse his friend’s spur of the moment nature. 

”Kenma is coming.”

“Be prepared.”

The second of the texts sent Kuroo’s heart speeding through the train tunnel. He felt his stomach drop and the starry-eyed gazes of the teenage girls adjacent to him turned to stone as their giggling came to a full stop.

“For what?” He typed back. 

Keiji’s response was instantaneous. It sparked concerned whispers and Kuroo had half a mind to tell the trio to mind their own business but his voice wouldn’t come and he didn’t have it in his heart really to begin with.

His heart, after all, felt like it was being ripped from his body and torn into pieces. The train car was entirely too quiet, just the pulsing of his own blood rushing through his brain. Everything was still save for flashing lights from the upcoming station – his stop. He didn’t even really want to get off anymore.

“To say goodbye.”

How on earth did Keiji expect him to prepare for that?

 

It drew the breath from Kuroo’s lungs all the same – the first time he laid eyes on Kenma. This wasn’t like when they were children and he felt himself smile from the inside when he spotted a young boy in the window across from his. This wasn’t like when he was a teenager and Kenma’s hand on his arm would light his heart on fire. Now, he could feel his lungs deflate, his blood run cold – he felt his heart stop dead in his chest. His love was alive in ways it hadn’t sung in many years and yet it was nearly dead in front of him.

“Your hair looks awful.” Kuroo murmured as Kenma came to sit beside him, not nearly as close as he would have in years prior. While Bokuto and Keiji remain quiet, grabbing their respective drinks from the table, Kuroo is given ample opportunity to make a clinical assessment. Kenma’s hair – he had been able to see even from a distance – was matte in finish and thinner than he ever remembered it being but still just as tantalizingly long. 

“So does yours.”

Kuroo drank from the glass in his hand, using the brim to hide his watchful gaze as he eyed the baby soft hairs that covered Kenma’s upper arms and shoulder – lined his jaw with absolute precision. 

“Orthostatic hypotension?” There was a lone glass left sitting on the table and Kuroo reached for it, passing it off to Kenma in the hopes that he would take a moment’s lapse from his game. And when he stilled his fluttering fingers to take the glass, Kuroo was able to catch – in vivid detail – the blossoming blue beneath his ribbed fingernails.

“Such big words for such common things. Why do you care anyway?”

There was great intention behind the intention with which Kenma avoided Kuroo’s touch and Kuroo saw a fleeting memory of boy who slowly began to shy away from him. It was almost unnatural but so very, very practiced. First, his touch when they were in school – the first sign that Kuroo’s feelings were not returned. Later, his existence all together. 

Kuroo felt bile rising in his throat in a flurry of anxiety.

“Maybe you should get more iron in your diet.”

“Maybe you need to mind your own business.”

“Nutrition IS my business, in case you forgot.”

Bokuto cleared his throat from across the small table, drawing Kuroo’s attention from his ever intensifying emotions. His best friend’s wide eyed gaze pulled him out of his own self-fulfilling abandonment. It begged his silence. Bokuto pulled his legs onto the loveseat, crossing them underneath himself before taking a heavy sip from his drink.

“So, Kenma. Why didn’t you stay with volleyball in college?”

“…I didn’t make the team...” He never looked up from his game. Kuroo tried not to pay it any mind, but he could see the way Kenma tensed his jaw, tendons jutting from along his neck and meeting gracelessly with his collarbone. Something inside him still stirred longingly when his eyes traced along these lines. He couldn’t shy his gaze, but he laughed anyway – some strangled sort of dying sound – before crossing his arms and tearing his heart away.

It seemed this lifeline was particularly short lived. 

“That’s funny. I heard you didn’t pass your physical.” 

“So what if I was sick?” Fiery, exposed – Kenma was defensive of these accusations, which only meant that Kuroo was right. “I still didn’t make the team because of it.”  
Kuroo was aware of Bokuto, who was trying to subdue his tirade. He had to have known – Bokuto and Keiji weren’t angry like he was; they were done with that part of grieving. 

But for him, it was blazing hot beneath his skin. Red, blistering, fear inducing flames.

“Bruh, you are still sick – just look at yourself.”

But who was he really mad at?

“I’m not sick.”

The longer he stayed, the whiter his vision became – narrowed in on his own selfish desires as he fought tirelessly against tears. 

“No, you’re just sick in the head. You’ve gotta be what – 95, 100 lbs.”

He could hear the venom in his own voice. It burned coming out of his own mouth and he could see in his friend’s eyes that they could smell it as it branded Kenma. Some sort of livid fear crossed through his golden eyes.

Why was he so angry?

“84.”

Heart still in his chest, Kuroo repeated the number to himself – quick math and his background were more than enough to tell him that number wasn’t right. Couldn’t POSSIBLY be right. If Kenma was that – that sick – how long had this been happening? Bitter traces of shocked embarrassment were left in Kenma’s shifting eyes.

“What?!”

Kuroo’s voice was impossibly loud and the look of guilt and shame Kenma wore increased tenfold, darting back and forth between his legs and his drink he had just picked up. 

When had he picked it back up?

“8-”

“No, I heard you.” Suddenly, Kuroo was more than aware of just how loud his voice had become. The spit fire anger that had been bubbling inside him seemed to subside. “I just wish I hadn’t.”

Kuroo’s eyes burned against his own tears – he begged them not to fall, not to give away his naked emotions. The air between him and Kenma grew even thicker; an ever taller wall that they built between one another. 

Kenma hadn’t always had a tall wall – Kuroo was one of the few people that knew this since once upon a time it had been Kenma tearing down his own wall. When had this one been built? When had Kuroo himself started helping to build it? Somewhere along the way, he had decided that if Kenma wanted a wall he could have it and that he would help lay the foundation.

“Look,” Kenma placed his phone face down on the table before looking around at his friends. Kuroo could see the quaking resolve in his eyes. “I am already aware that my condition has become rather obvious to most everyone.” 

Those words melted his ever thawing heart and yet they hardened it to stone. They were words so practiced that Kuroo was certain that Kenma had probably said them 1000 times over. He contemplated lighting a cigarette in the bar.

“But I’m fine. So please don’t worry.”

And yet, those words were still lies. Clear as day – they were painted to look gentle, to look kind. But Kuroo had heard them before in pleasantries to cancer patients or the parents of a severely premature infant. It wasn’t any one word that made that phrase a lie – none of the words themselves were false but the tired way in which Kenma asked them not to worry…

Only a dying man uttered that phrase with such a solemn face.

He stood, closing his eyes and bracing his fists against his side, bowing towards Keiji and Bokuto. 

“I’m sorry for ruining your evening.”

How on earth had Keiji expected him to be prepared for this? He could feel Bokuto’s eyes on his back as he stormed out of the bar and knew he would follow – Kuroo wouldn’t go far. Instead, Kuroo settled for lighting his cigarette outside the building like the gentleman he was.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, there was a place and time when Kenma would have been the one to follow him out of the building, to stand against the wall with him – just stand. Kuroo longed for the day when he could do that again – feel the same peace in his heart at knowing that Kenma was his and only his. 

What a selfish thought.

Time was easily lost to his first cigarette, then his second and from there they just seemed to keep going. He could feel the hairs along his throat stand on end – a lifeless energy to his limbs, overwhelmed and tired from his ruthless anxiety. 

“Are you going to talk to him about it at least?”

“What’s there to talk about?” Bokuto had approached almost silently into the very corner of Kuroo’s vision, hands in his pockets and chin closer to his chest than Kuroo could ever   
remember seeing it. He took a long, pained drag from his current cigarette, blowing the smoke – measured – from his nose. “I’m not a therapist and that’s what he needs.”

“But you’re his friend.”

“He hasn’t talked to me in years, Bo.”

“He’s been sick Kuroo!” The word “sick” rang in his ears for a century after it left Bokuto’s mouth. Sick was the word that had plagued his mind for the past few weeks every time he remembered hearing the name “Kozume Kenma” come through the emergency response phone. “We all just assumed you knew…”

Knew and didn’t care? Knew and still remained distant from him? Knew and didn’t ask about his health with every waking chance he got? If he had KNOWN he would have done something about it by now!

The small head of blonde hair that poked itself around the corner of the door sent guilt pumping through Kuroo’s veins like venom – like the taste of a hit of cocaine or bile through the back of your throat. The wind tousled Kenma’s hair in a way that somehow betrayed his composure. It made it easy for Kuroo to see just how dry his lips had become, the sharpness of his cheekbones and the almost translucent quality to his skin that allowed it to turn bright red against the warm air – it was as if he was cold in the summer heat. 

He didn’t even notice as Bokuto stumbled back into the bar.

“Hey.” Kenma wrapped a hand nervously around his upper arm, a familiar death vice of anxiety. “Can we talk?”

God of course they could talk, Kuroo thought – the words stalled though, drowned out by the sorrowed look in his honey eyes. Blindsided with his own anxiety, it was almost as if they were children again – Kuroo knew what it was Kenma wanted, what he needed. And yet he wasn’t able to look him in the eyes and give it to him because of his own selfish desires. He knew better than to bring guilt into this – blaming Kenma wouldn’t make him healthy again.

So he started walking – if Kenma wanted to follow, he would and if Kenma followed, he knew that it was time. He would tell him, just the two of them, alone in the alley behind a bar in Ginza – far less romantic than he had ever wanted it to be, but a fitting location to accept defeat. Wouldn’t it be easier, Kuroo thought, to say goodbye to Kenma if it was   
Kenma telling him that he never wanted to see him again?

“You left me…”

Kenma’s voice was so chillingly small, raising the hairs on the back of his neck – still turned to Kenma – and he didn’t dare to turn around. He couldn’t look him in the eyes when he was rejected. 

“You stopped answering my phone calls.” He didn’t mean to sound so angry, really he didn’t. Was it wrong to be so bitter? At the time, Kuroo had tried to reach out, had tried to stay in contact. Sure, there had been many late nights but he had always been sure to call Kenma when he had the chance. After all, Kenma was his somebody – the name that would fall off his lips when his classmates would ask him “who the pretty girl was in his lock screen photo”. “Why?”

“Because of this…” Finally, Kuroo turned back around only to realize that Kenma had turned on his heels. He gestured crudely to his body, up and down. “What do I look like to you, Kuroo?”

Kuro smiled, some distant, longing memory circling his mind – summer sun dancing on the ravine as he stood beside his dearest friend. “Like Kenma.”

“No!” The rage the filled Kenma’s eyes when he stalked towards Kuroo was like that of a cornered animal – it took all of his energy to stand his ground. But he wouldn’t look away – couldn’t look away. How long had it been since he had seen so much emotion flooding those beautiful eyes? 

He stood just close enough that he was barely out of Kuro’s reach, just close enough that he could smell the panic on him. “What kind of disgusting person have I turned into? What have I become without you?!”

The only thing that he could think to do was laugh. This wasn’t the conversation he wanted to have here – these were emotions that he wasn’t prepared to face. His fear was so fresh and new – this wound would only be made deeper. “You always were funny.” Kenma’s face quivered in some unrecognizable way. “Where is any of this coming from? This isn’t like you.”

“It’s stupid…but when I see all my failures, all of my flaw sitting in front of me in the mirror, in the photos of me from high school, with you – the whole team…” Despite what Kuroo was sure were his best efforts, little droplets started to make their way to the pavement by Kenma’s feet – one tear, then two, and then hundreds more and Kuroo wondered just how long he had been holding onto these words. 

“I see them around and they just stare…I just stare now…not just in mirrors anymore. In windows and puddles.” Kuroo could hear the way his voice hitched, the intensity to Kenma’s emotions letting itself be known. It was displayed in little gestures that only he ever seemed to notice. Kenma was a language that only he could ever understand – that only he had ever WANTED to understand. 

“I claim that I love you, Kuroo, but I don’t. I don’t feel anything anymore other than this guilt and self-loathing. But it hurt so much…”

His breath left his body. Kuro’s heart stilled in his chest and he prayed to some god somewhere – thank you for giving him these words but why did they have to be so bitter? Why did hearing the words “I love you” have to be like drinking the thickest of teas?

“What did?”

There was no doubt that he knew the answer. It was clear cut crystals and his own self-hatred that swallowed him whole on his worst days and left him floundering on his best. He knew what he had done – he already blamed himself. 

“Watching you leave – watching you walk away without looking back at me.” There was struggle in Kenma’s breathing – labored and heavy with fear. But for the first time, Kuro felt like he was truly looking at him. The sparkle in his eyes was there and finally Kuro had a name for the way Kenma had always looked at him – loving. “I had loved you for so long. I had convinced myself that you would stay forever…”

“So you stopped talking to me for almost 5 years?” And then his eyes dropped to the ground again, full of embarrassment and shame. It broke Kuro’s heart to know that he could have stopped this. Back when he was a child and he told his mom he wanted to marry Kenma. When he was 12 and kids made fun of him when he said he didn’t have a crush on anyone. When he was 16 and realized that soon he would have to stop holding Kenma’s hand on their way home.

What if he had kept holding Kenma’s hand? What if he hadn’t stopped telling people how much he loved Kenma? What if he had just said what everyone had known he wanted to?   
“It hurts.” Kuro reached out, grabbing onto the icy hand across from him. The words he needed finally seemed to sort themselves out. “When you see the person you love so sick.”  
That was all it took – a single sentence and Kenma’s hand in his own was enough for the levy of his heart to break. It was like a tsunami across the city, Kenma sobbing and curled in on himself – wailing in despair, finally being heard.

“I’ve tried to be better, I swear.”

God, he sounded so tired – weary in a way that begged the world the end his suffering. 

“But what?”

“I can’t let all this hard work go to waste…” 

Kuro couldn’t believe the words he was hearing – couldn’t process their meaning or find even a glimmer of truth in them. This wasn’t hard work – this was suicide. Kenma was being complicit in his own self destruction – had given up his dreams so that he could look like the child time had left behind.

“It won’t be long now, Kuro.” 

He felt all of the blood drain from his face. He felt his hands go as cold as Kenma’s. His heart stopped beating.

“We can part ways here and loose nothing. And maybe we both with this was all being said 4 or 5 years ago, but it isn’t. And I am going to die and you are going to move on to some nice girl with long hair and a pretty face that can give you everything you deserve.”

As Kenma spoke, Kuro found that the need to vomit became stronger and stronger until he felt it creeping up his throat and through his nose. Eventually it was there in front of him on the pavement and he was bent over with his hands on his knees, dry heaving his anxiety away.

“Don’t say that!” 

He had to fight himself to look Kenma in the eyes and when he eventually did, it was like his body was being tugged towards him, Kuro’s arms opening and Kenma seemingly falling into them, his head buried deeply in Kuro’s jacket

“Please don’t say that.” 

Kuro found he couldn’t hold his own tears in either anymore. Years of shame – years of feeling guilty for his own hunger – the fight was over. And he realized just how exhausting the fight had been.

“I’ve been so worried about you, you idiot. For a while, I thought you WERE dead!” He weaved his fingers through the back of Kenma’s hair, relished in its smell and texture. For years he had dreamed of this moment. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined it would happen like this. 

“I have…so much I need to say…”

 

“I had this dream the other night…” 

Kuro looks up at the ticking clock across from him, plays with one of the tousled tufts of unwashed hair across his temple. He curls his toes against the carpet as he tries to gather his words – they had been so hard to find lately, lost every time he closes his eyes.

“I’m uh…I’m sitting in a movie theatre. Like an old one.” He doesn’t believe in dream analysis. “I’m with Tooru for some reason and we’re watching a movie.” 

When he speaks the words into existence, the scene materializes before him, as if he is walking through a memory.

“We’re watching him die.”

“You haven’t told me much about that morning.”

“I’ve been waiting for the right time…”

His doctor looks at him, waiting for him to continue. He doesn’t know if he wants to – wants to relieve that kind of nightmare. 

A voice in the back of his head screams in agony. 

“He was…he was in bed when I found him. I thought…” The knot in his throat he has to swallow never seems to go away. “I thought maybe he was still sleeping. I…I knew.”

The ticking of the clock is far too loud. 

“I knew he was dead but I couldn’t leave him…”

From the corner of the room, he sees his Doctor rest her pen across the top of her clipboard. 

“Do you wish you had followed Tooru’s advice?”

No, of course he doesn’t. There is never a day that he wishes he had done things differently. The only thing he wishes he could do differently would have had to happen years ago. 

Of course he’s glad he finally got to touch the sun before it set.

Somehow he can’t manage to get those words out of his mouth. That would mean admitting to his love and that was shame he didn’t want to live with. Couldn’t live with.

Couldn’t bear the burden of it alone.

It clawed at his stomach when he ate – when had been the last time Kenma had eaten? 

Eventually, there is nothing left but the sound of the ticking clock while Kuro runs circles in his own head, trying to come to terms with the constant pain that trickles through his blood. It follows him on the train ride home, into his apartment and stares back at him in the mirror. His pain is reflected in every flickering Tokyo light. It’s a compounding sort of suffering that Bokuto says is eating away at his personality.

Bokuto isn’t wrong – he runs his fingers through the back of his hair, clenches a fist in the front of his shirt. What happens when the ache becomes too much? 

The familiar feeling of the edge pulls him forward into Kenma’s arms. What was once a heavy feeling in his heart becomes heavy in his arms in a different kind of way as his vision stars to blur around the edges. From when he sits, he feels like it is clarity. Kuro feels as if he is seeing for the first time in so very long as the world becomes black and all that is left is the sound of cars becoming more and more distant. 

He never was any good at saying goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> In loving memory of Katherine West; may there come a day for all of us when we look in the mirror and can see the damage we have done. May that day not come too late.


End file.
